About Manuscript Division Finding Aids

Since about 1950, registers have been prepared to describe and
facilitate use of the Manuscript Division's larger collections.
More than nineteen hundred registers have been prepared and are
available for research use in the Manuscript Reading Room. Although
registers occasionally vary in format according to the nature of
the collection, most include information on the provenance and
administration of the collection, an organizational or biographical
history or chronology, a scope and content note, a description
of the various series or groups of manuscripts in the collection,
and a container list. The container list normally describes the
contents of each container by folder title. A few registers include
partial or complete name indexes to the correspondence contained
in the collection.

Manuscript Division finding aids are now being converted for use
on the Library of Congress Web site. To date, more than three-quarters
of the total are available in electronic format. Paper copies of all extant registers
are available for use in the Manuscript Reading Room. Please contact
the reading room staff for further assistance.

The Library is a participant in Encoded
Archival Description (EAD) and has makes finding aids from
many of its reading rooms available in HTML and PDF versions
derived from this format; these finding aids may be searched
or a union list of these Library of Congress finding aids browsed
from its search
page. Further information on Library of Congress implementation
of EAD is available at its EAD
Finding Aids Page. Online Manuscript Division finding aids
in all formats may be searched or browsed on the Manuscript Reading
Room finding
aids page.